Here are the screenshots and comments from the live stream of Space Dandy Episode 11. It’s a little later than last week because I didn’t want to spend late-night hours working on it. Not very much actually happened this episode, but the stream comments were able to keep it interesting, and I actually managed to get around 90 screens.
As usual, you need to watch the episode for the full experience. Enjoy!“HERE WE GO”[Read more…]

Here are screenshots and .gif files from KILL la KILL episode 22! This time, rather than go in myself and take all the screenshots myself I decided to settle with the screenshots and .gif files I picked up online. For anyone wondering about the text at the top of some of the images, there was an earthquake warning while the episode was airing. As with last week, be aware of spoilers within.[Read more…]

As promised, here are the screenshots and stream comments from the latest episode of Space Dandy. This week I was able to get around double last week’s because I was able to take screenshots much more quickly. I also edited the screens more accurately this week so there won’t be big grey lines on the sides of the pictures (though, I still see some as I look through them. Hopefully I’ll do better next week). Remember, to get the full experience you should watch the episode.[Read more…]

Here are insane amounts of screenshots and .gif images from the latest episode of KILL la KILL. These are from the RAW file, so none of the images have subtitles. Keep in mind as well that to get the full experience you must watch the episode, and that spoilers may be contained within.Note: I decided not to put in stream comments because the stream is the same night as Space Dandy and I don’t want to be up until 3:00 in the morning compiling screenshots and comments from both of them.

Nobunagun is definitely one of my favorite anime this season. The original manga comes from the manga magazine Comic Earth Star, which is relatively new and obscure. The few anime that have been adapted from titles in the magazine have mostly been average or below average (the worst offender being pupa, which I will talk about later in this post). The premise is a bit strange: For centuries, a weird combination of Kyubey and a robot bear(?) has been approaching famous historical figures and asking them to put their DNA into little balls. Now, in the present day, a bunch of teenagers who hold the genes of those historical figures for whatever reason react with those balls to get cool powers and fight an evil and rapidly developing alien race. There are also both homosexual and heterosexual undertones, a large cast of strange characters based on various historical figures (including Oda Nobunaga, Mahatma Gandhi, Jack the Ripper, Isaac Newton, and many others), and really awesome action scenes.
The show is animated by Bridge (Mitsudomoe, Devil Survivor 2: The Animation), which has only ever made the two aforementioned titles. Mitsudomoe is a cheap copy of Kodomo no Jikan, and DeSu 2 is one of the worst anime of 2013, one of the worst years for anime in general since the beginning of the modern age of anime. With such a short and unimpressive resume one would wonder how Nobunagun could be good. However, it excels in almost every way: The characters and their interactions are fun and interesting, the story lines are well-developed, the enemy aliens are constantly evolving and never get boring, and the humor is rich. Even the animation is creative; it takes on a relatively different style than most anime this decade, and some of the sequences are very suited to the mood and provide a good feel for what is going on. I personally look forward to this anime every week more than any of the other ones this season (not counting KILL la KILL, but for that I mostly look forward to the threads about it online).

The main character in the heat of battle, right before saving everybody’s lives in the most badass way.

Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai! Ren

Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai! Ren, or Chuu2Koi Ren, is the second season of Kyoto Animation’s popular 2012 anime. There was also a recap film of the first season in Fall 2013, which I watched and wrote about here. I don’t want to repeat myself too much from that last post, but I will say again that KyoAni’s work since they began adapting light novels from their own label is not nearly as good as their previous work.
However, while Chuu2Koi may never be as good as KyoAni’s previous works, it is still very good. It, while not the first anime to feature the concept of chuunibyou, may be the first to show it in a slice-of-life scenario; The main character, Yuuta, has “graduated” from his chuunibyou phase, but as he enters high school he is suddenly surrounded by those who haven’t yet given it up. What follows are wacky high school antics, some drama, and some romance. These were all very strong points of the first season. But does the second season live up to that?
The short answer is, no it doesn’t. Problems causing the drama in the first season have been completely resolved, leaving the writer with a difficult task: thinking of a new problem. This comes in the form of new character, Shichimiya. She is introduced early on as a potential new love interest for Yuuta, but this plot is quickly cast aside. Even I can’t tell what’s going to happen now; Most of the season so far has been episodic, so I don’t foresee a very strong story developing. The short stories portrayed in each episode are fun in general, however. The comedy, while sometimes working, often feels unfunny. Overall, while it is enjoyable to watch, Chuu2Koi Ren honestly doesn’t have all too much going for it, especially after a relatively strong first season.

One of this season’s funnier parts.

pupa

Pupa (stylized as pupa in all lowercase letters) is almost a crime against humanity. Based on a fairly good manga, pupa had the misfortune of being adapted into an anime by Studio DEEN, famous for the offensively bad adaptations of Fate/Stay night and Higurashi no Naku Koro ni (though Higurashi seemed to get better over time), and making dozens of other sub-par to bad shows including this season’s Sakura Trick. I had been looking forward to this anime for many months. It was initially announced to air in Autumn 2013, and after it failed to air no more news was given about it until very close to the start of the Winter 2014 season. I was still hopeful; maybe the extra time was to make it better (as is usually the case with video games and movies). As time went on, I became less and less optimistic. I tried to remind myself that even DEEN has made great shows, but the moment I heard that each episode would only be four minutes long, I had given up hope that it could be even remotely good. When it aired, I knew that DEEN had failed the anime fandom once again. The show is basically the story of a girl who has become a man-eating monster and her brother that tries to protect her and find a way to change her back. The anime adaptation mostly consists of the girl literally eating parts of her brother (that grow back for whatever reason) to stay alive, flashbacks to the siblings’ past, and some creepy scientists that want to capture and study both of them. The only way I can enjoy this is watching it with buddies. I don’t know exactly how they feel about it, but I think that we all agree that it’s absolutely stupid.
Thank you, Studio DEEN. I will have another bone to pick with them later when I do talk about Sakura Trick.

One of the worst character designs I’ve seen in awhile. At least in the manga it wasn’t in color.

That concludes the third part of my thoughts on Winter 2014 anime. Thank you for reading!To learn more about any of the shows I’ve mentioned, try searching for their names on Google, or using a database like AniDB or MyAnimeList.

While watching Space Dandy episode 9 in a livestream with some 600 people as it aired, I decided to take screenshots and record comments, all so I could put them here. All the comments below were taken directly or very slightly edited from the livestream I was in. Obviously you need to watch the episode to get the full experience.[Read more…]

Nobunaga the Fool is something weird, and not in a good way. It’s reminiscent of Kyoukaisenjou no Horizon that aired in 2011 and 2012 in that it’s a strange corruption of history set in some kind of futuristic alternate universe. It sounds pretty cool, especially if you liked Horizon. After seeing that it would have mecha, adding further to the already promised insanity of having Oda Nobunaga (conqueror of Japan in the 1500s), Joan of Arc (French heroine in the 1400s), and Leonardo da Vinci (Italian polymath in the 1400s to the 1500s) in the same place, I was excited. The result was very disappointing. I stuck it out for a few episodes, but at episode 5 I decided to drop it. I was bored. It struggled to keep my attention- I even found myself browsing the Web as I watched it, and at one point I stopped reading the subtitles in favor of letting it play in the background. The characters were bland; Nobunaga was a generic delinquent-type, Joan of Arc was portrayed as some kind of damsel in distress, and da Vinci was just plain annoying. The other characters were mostly useless and provided no real substance to the story. Even the action was uninteresting. Nobunaga’s mech was severely overpowered and seemed to simply brush aside anything that came its way. Not even the addition of Julius Caesar to the mayhem was able to keep me interested. Ultimately, I decided that it wasn’t worth sitting through every week (especially after learning that it would run for 24 episodes). Instead, I’m just going wait for a third season of Horizon.

In an alternate universe, Joan of Arc is almost completely useless.

Saki: Zenkoku-hen

Let me start by saying that this show takes place sometime around the year 2050, a time where men are nearly extinct and mahjong has tens of millions of players.
Many were excited at the premier of Saki: Zenkoku-hen, the long-awaited second season to 2009’s insane-mahjong-with-cute-girls anime Saki. Personally, I only watched the series a month before the premier of this second season, but I can understand the pain of some fans- especially when 2012’s Saki: Achiga-hen – Episode of Side-A spin-off series failed to be of the same quality as the first season. Saki makes the complex and difficult game of mahjong fun and interesting, especially with the addition of moe highschool girls with strange mahjong powers. One question I asked myself, however, is whether or not the second season will be able to keep up with the first season, when Achiga-hen was unable to. In my opinion, while so far it has not been able to live up to its name, it’s still pretty good. It’s fun to watch, and the large and diverse cast of characters remains a strong point. Since I know hardly anything about mahjong, I’m unable to comment on that fully, but it is very exciting to watch. I do feel that it loses enjoyment due to jumping right into the game without much focus on character building, and because the drama seen in the first season is gone without a trace. Everybody is everybody else’s friend, which is a problem in competition-type anime; The only real “rival” character would be main character Saki Miyanaga’s older sister, who is rarely seen, and who I do not expect to see very much of going forward either. Most probably, the climactic battle between sisters will be released as OVAs, a formula Studio Gokumi used when producing Achiga-hen. Overall, while it is a severe downgrade from the first season, Zenkoku-hen is still a very enjoyable and interesting show.

A telltale sign that things are about to get intense.

Tonari no Seki-kun

There isn’t very much to say about Tonari no Seki-kun. It’s a series of shorts, with each being approximately 7 minutes long, and each one is pretty funny. It has a simple premise: A “master distraction maker”, Seki, plays with random things during class and distracts Yokoi, the girl who sits next to him. Each episode brings another distraction. It’s not the best thing ever, but its humor is very consistent and enjoyable.

Yokoi just wants to pay attention to class.

That concludes the second part of my thoughts on Winter 2014 airing anime. Thank you for reading!To learn more about any of the shows I’ve mentioned, try searching for their names on Google, or using a database like AniDB or MyAnimeList.